beat and break
by shadows and sunshine
Summary: You'll have a bouquet with yellow flowers.' Severus, smiles, and forsythia. -oneshot-


This was written for the Flower Challenge on the HPFC forum. It was fun. It's my first time writing about a more major character, so I'm not sure if it's very good. Oh well. Enjoy. The title comes from the Life is Beautiful – Vega 4 song again.

our hearts,

they _beat and break_

i.

"You'd want forsythia in your wedding bouquet, wouldn't you?"

She laughs and plucks a sprig of it from the bush beside her, twirling it between her fingers before tucking it behind her ear. "Of course I would…but don't go ahead planning my wedding right away, Sev!"

She's too busy giggling that she doesn't notice a smile twist the corner of his mouth upwards and satisfaction grace his skinny face.

"Promise?"

"Promise!" she confirms, tossing a piece of grass his way. He dodges, but not in time, and the strand gets caught in his hair, a thin sliver of green among black.

"You'll have a bouquet with yellow flowers," he says. And even though she should be the one concerned about these details—the dress and the ring and the cake and the decorations—he is obsessed with them. And he doesn't tell her that when he imagines her wedding, he's the one waiting for her at the altar.

ii.

They walk hand-in-hand along the edge of the lake, and looking at them—just a quick glance from someone who didn't know any better—might think that they were a couple. He doesn't mind this misconception at all; in fact, he goes out of his way to perpetuate it, brushing hair from her eyes when the wind blows it across her face, playing with her fingers and smiling at everything she says.

No one pays attention to them—no one would, when that awful Black was snogging Marlene McKinnon on the grass just yards away, but he likes it that way. No one has to notice, just as long as he gets to hold her hand and see her smile and smile back. The only way the moment could have been more perfect was if she'd had a sprig of forsythia tucked into her hair.

"Hey, Evans!"

That even more awful Potter saunters up, hair mussed and glasses askew, and Lily pulls her hand out of his and moves to stand in front of him.

"Leave us alone," she threatens, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

"_Us_?" he mocks. "Are you and Snivellus a couple now?"

For once—for just a minute, even though Severus knows he's just messing with him—for that moment alone, he loves James Potter.

He pretends he doesn't see Lily blush fiercely and yell out, "Of course not!" with force.

iii.

"He fancies you!"

"James Potter," she begins, drawing in a breath, "is an arrogant little toerag."

For a second—just one second—he breathes a sigh of relief. But that doesn't mean it's over just yet.

And then, she's doing the worst thing—the thing he never could have imagined and yet worried about every night that she saw her gaze scorch him when he sat beside Avery or Mulciber—she's walking away.

"Lily—"

She doesn't stop, and she doesn't look back, and he swears, as she walks away, he catches a glimpse of yellow caught up in her hair.

iv.

He's walking down Diagon Alley when he hears the news—he's not even supposed to, he just catches it as it floats out of a very pregnant witch's mouth.

"And Lily Evans is marrying James Potter next month…"

The words halt him dead in his tracks. He stops, thinks about turning around to ask if he heard her correctly, but the witch is already walking away babbling about the Irish International Team's Chaser.

When he gets home—in two minutes, maybe less, because the Potions ingredients he was planning on buying barely seem real now—he picks up a quill and writes. When he looks down, he sees that the first word is _Lily, _and the next words are _I'm sorry._

But he crumples it up and adds it to the pile on his dresser. It's too late now.

He doesn't know that she has an identical stack of crumpled up letters on her dresser, all addressed to him.

v.

When the wedding pictures are published in the Daily Prophet, at first Severus doesn't want to look. That's what he tells himself, at least. But he buys himself a copy anyway.

He opens to the page and the first thing he does is look at her bouquet. The picture is in black and white, so he can't pick out the yellow flowers, but he swears he can see their familiar, delicate petals all mixed in with roses and baby's breath.

He tosses the paper into the trash and watches through the crumpled pages as Lily laughs and smiles and holds James Potter's hand, the way she did his by the lake.

And then he pulls it back out again, never mind the witch on the bench beside him giving him a strange look, because he really shouldn't throw it away.

At the very least, she kept her promise.

vi.

When he's dying—and he knows he's dying, it's finally time now, he's been running too long—the only thing he can think of is Lily.

So he grabs Harry Potter's collar and pulls him down as the silver liquid memories spill out around him.

"Take…"

If nothing else, at least her son can see the way she looked with yellow flowers in her hair and how her eyes twinkled when she smiled—her eyes—

"Look at me."

And he does, he obeys, onyx eyes meeting green, the exact same shape and color—

It's not the worst way to die.

xxx

Uncreative, I know. This was definitely not my best work. Oh well. It was all I could come up with. Review.


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